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Cumbrian man caught with £30,000 of cocaine in his trousers

A man has been jailed after being caught with more than £30,000-worth of cocaine in his trousers.

Mark Skelton, of Workington: Jailed for three years and two months after he admitted possessing cocaine with intent to supply

Mark Skelton, 32, from Workington was arrested after a police officer stopped the Ford Mondeo car in which he was travelling on the A66 at Penrith on October 11 last year.

In 2008 Skelton was jailed for just over three years for supplying drugs which caused the death of a soldier friend.

Kingsman Terry Thompson, 20, of Workington, died from a drug-induced heart attack after taking the ecstasy while home on leave from Iraq to attend his grandmother’s funeral.

Skelton was jailed again yesterday after a judge at Carlisle Crown Court was told a police officer asked Mondeo driver Martin McClure where they had been. He said they had been to an auction but when asked the same question Skelton said he was a self-employed cleaner out on an emergency call. The two different answers were enough to make the officer suspicious.

The pair were taken to Penrith police station, where they were searched.

Nothing was found on Mr McClure, prosecutor Dick Binstead said, but a knotted plastic bag containing a white powder, later found to be cocaine, was discovered on Skelton.

Skelton, of Yeowartville, Workington, pleaded guilty to possessing cocaine, a class A drug, with intent to supply it.

Mr Binstead told the court the 27 grams of the drug found on Skelton would have been worth more than £29,000 when sold at street level. But the cocaine was of such an unusually high purity a dealer would have been able to “dilute” it by cutting it down with an agent, making it go at least four times as far.

Skelton, who ran his own window cleaning and contract cleaning business, was jailed for three years and two months and ordered to pay a £120 victim surcharge.